


There's Nothing I Can't Do For You

by Pluppelina



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Bondage, F/M, Non-Sexual Kink, spoilers for 1x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pluppelina/pseuds/Pluppelina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't want you to leave, you know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's Nothing I Can't Do For You

“I don’t want you to leave, you know.”

He says it in the dead silence of the night, after she’s tied him to the bed and sits to watch over him at the end of it. He’s been feigning a need to use the bathroom for the past half an hour, but she knows all his tells by now - if he really needed her to let him up, he’d be able to look her in the eye. Despite what most people seem to think, he isn’t a cold, pathological liar. Right now, he’s facing the ceiling.

“If I were a woman and you were a man, what I’m feeling would most likely be described as father issues. My father never paid any attention to me or took care of me emotionally, and now that you’re leaving, I’m afraid that you’ll do the same - that’s the popular science idea, anyway, and we both know how unreliable popular science can be.”

She wants to cut him short right there and tell him that everything will be okay, that she isn’t going to stop seeing him just because she isn’t going to live with him or be his sober companion anymore, but she can hear from his tone of voice that he isn’t done speaking yet. She doesn’t interrupt him even when the pause stretches on, as though he needs to gather himself for telling her something difficult.

“That woman, the one we arrested... She was interested in me sexually, and I in her. If she hadn’t been the one to plant that bomb, then maybe something could’ve come of it. But it still could never have been this. You... You know me, Watson. I trust you in a way I’ve trusted very few people in my life. I can’t ever imagine becoming this vulnerable to anyone but you.”

He makes it sound like a love confession, but it’s not. She knows that it’s not. There’s never been and never will be anything sexual between them, at first because she was a professional and later because she realised that it would be completely superfluous. Sherlock needs a strict, guiding hand to allow him to be as reckless and single-minded as he really is and she can understand why he’s worried. Tying their client to his bed at night with gentle knots and kind words in order to make him go to sleep isn’t a method applied by most sober companions or sponsors, but it’s so obviously what Sherlock needs and Joan is happy to provide it for him.

“Watson, I...” There’s a long pause, longer than before, and she decides to take mercy on him, because she knows where this is going now.

“You want me to stay.”

“Does it really need saying?”

Joan supposes that no, it doesn’t. She can see it on his face, in the eyes that are suddenly turned on her and so full of need she’s not sure how she’ll ever turn him down. But she has to. She’s never been a user, she doesn’t have any experience, she’s a sober companion and she ought to move on. Still, she could learn. She could stick around and help Sherlock deal with any situation, whether it be drug-related or not, if someone would agree to pay her for it, and the look on Sherlock’s face says that he would gladly. She smiles sadly at him, because it’s not healthy for Sherlock to be so dependent upon only one person, but then again, he already is, and that’s at least partly her fault. She rises, and walks up to him, undoes one of the knots so he can get loose when it’s time, and kisses his forehead. As always, the simple gesture makes him relax.

“We’ll talk more in the morning. Go to sleep, Sherlock.”

When she leaves, she thinks she can hear him whisper her name; _Joan_ , and suddenly she knows that she can't leave him.


End file.
